He either approves of you or you’re a disgrace. A country either impresses him or it’s a mess. A media outlet either does great work or produces trash.

An either-or world is a simple place that’s easy to comprehend, especially with a brash guy in a red tie telling you who’s up and who’s down.

Watching him wing it today in the same room where I almost bought a car made me realize three things:

1. Even when cleared of vehicles (and filled with 400+ cheering Caucasians), an auto showroom has a sleazy ambiance.

2. Trump exaggerates about everything. I mean everything. Amid a tepid three-inch snowfall, he opens by marveling that the crowd made it “in the middle of the worst snowstorm.”

3. Laughing throughout a front-runner’s speech feels satisfying — like eating a donut. But soon after, anxiety spikes as you wonder, “Could this guy really be our next president?”

What did Trump say?

He plays the I-approve/I-disapprove game from the outset. He approves of the audience (we’re “beautiful people”), Tom Brady (calling the Patriots’ quarterback “an amazing guy”) and a recent TIME magazine Trump profile (“so well written…without any barbs”).

He disapproves of the media in general. Looking at all the cameras on a riser in the back of the room, he says, “Even when we get the right stories, these people in the back, they have to take a shot. It’s always like you have two good paragraphs in there, and a kill. Three good ones, and a kill. And then in the end, the story’s lousy because the kills are bigger than the good ones.”

He approves of The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the recent Republican debate.

He disapproves of Ted Cruz, calling him “a hypocrite.”

He approves of the American people, calling them “smart” and “caring.”

He disapproves of Glenn Beck, labeling him “a dopey guy…who looks like hell.”

I could go on. Trump did.

“Some people see something like that and they believe it,” Trump says, referring to Beck’s claim that Trump voted for Obama. “There’s nobody to refute ‘em…It’s so dishonest out there with the media. It’s so dishonest.”

Pundits hail Trump for not acting like a typical politician. But he’s canny. He tells a long story about his experience in the days after 9/11.

“When you think, firemen coming in from Long Island, driving in and coming in from Iowa,” he says. Then he repeats admirably, “We had fire departments from Iowa coming in.”

He mentions no other state.

Like other candidates, Trump emphasizes his success. He tells us of his steady surge in the polls. He lists turnouts at his rallies (“I go to Dallas, we have 20,000-21,000 people. Mobile, Alabama, had 35,000 people. We had in Oklahoma, 20,000 people.”)

Listening to Trump for nearly an hour, I hear almost no incontrovertible facts. He says we have a $500 billion trade deficit with China. True? Not according to PolitiFact.

To his credit, Trump tracks the latest headlines. He tells me something I didn’t know, and I’m a pretty hungry consumer of news.

“Even today, I’m leaving and I’m seeing what happened,” he says. “Today a hotel was blown up. Many, many people dead. They don’t even know how many people. Just blown up. Just blown up. Innocent people. Just blown up.”

Where? I just checked: The explosion occurred in a luxury hotel in Burkina Faso.

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Blog Author

Morey Stettner

Portsmouth resident Morey Stettner loves to meet and judge presidential candidates, from front-runners to fringe players. He’ll show up, shake hands and give you a close-up view of New Hampshire retail politics. He’s the author of five books ... Read Full